BLESSING OF A SCHOLARSHIP COMES FULL CIRCLE FOR CATHOLIC-BORN IMMIGRANT-TURNED-LAWYER.

Leaving Hong Kong, where her parents fled the Communist takeover of China, Margaret Wong came to the United States in 1969 on a student visa. The blessing of a full scholarship to attend Ottumwa Heights, a Catholic all-girls junior college in Iowa, subsequently led to a law degree from the University of Buffalo, and paved the way for Margaret’s rise to prominence here and abroad as a specialist in immigration and nationality law. 

Fast-forward 35 years and Margaret W. Wong & Associates employees 60 in seven offices around the county, and Margaret herself has earned numerous awards, including the Margaret Ireland Award from the Cleveland Women’s City Club and being named to Crain’s Cleveland Business “Women of Influence” list.
  
So when Sister Judith Ann Karam, then president and CEO of the Sisters of Charity Health System, came to Margaret in 2011 about serving on the St. Vincent Charity Development Foundation Board, Margaret knew it was time to give back to the faith community that was there for her from the beginning. It was a connection made even more fitting because Sister Judith Ann had served as a mentor to Margaret’s late husband, Kam Chan, as he established his pharmacy practice.
 
Working with the Foundation, Margaret quickly learned what St. Vincent Charity and “Care Beyond Medicine” means to the community and the people it serves. “St. Vincent gives such great care. It is different from other hospitals for how they treat patients and families,” she said. “People are always friendly, even when you walk the halls. Nurses and staff are talking to each other, always smiling and saying hello. That makes a difference to patients and their loved ones.”
 
Because of her belief in St. Vincent Charity’s mission in the community and excellence in care, Margaret recently committed $250,000 to the Foundation’s campaign, which she sees as providing a golden opportunity to share what she calls “Cleveland’s best-kept secret in health care.”

 “We are the best in orthopedics, bariatrics and mental health. But sometimes, as a Catholic institution, we are humble. We don’t want to brag about ourselves,” Margaret said. “However… we need more people to know us and talk about us. This campaign allows us to better brand ourselves. It is the perfect opportunity to tell our story.”

ST. VINCENT CHARITY CEO: “IT’S VALIDATION OF THE QUALITY OUTCOMES OF OUR BARIATRIC PROGRAM.” 

St. Vincent Charity Medical Center has been selected as the first hospital in the country to participate in the Pacific Business Group on Health (PBGH) Employers Centers of Excellence Network (ECEN) for bariatric surgery. PBGH is a non-profit business coalition that represents 60 large health care purchaser members with more than 10 million employees, retirees and dependents. 

With this contract, St. Vincent Charity will provide weight loss surgery for large national employers, whose covered members will be eligible to receive bariatric surgery through a travel surgery program that includes pre- and post-op services covered through a negotiated bundle payment arrangement.

The agreement took effect January 1, 2016, following a competitive nationwide assessment and selection process. “Our selection is validation of the quality outcomes of our bariatric program,” says Dr. David F. Perse, president and CEO of St. Vincent Charity Medical Center. “Since 1997, St. Vincent Charity has performed more than 7,000 bariatric surgeries. Our success rate is high because our patients are well prepared for the surgery,” he added.

In choosing St. Vincent Charity, PBGH noted the medical center’s clinical expertise and quality, willingness to be a partner and collaborator, commitment to a tailored patient experience, and central location in Northeast Ohio, as well as flexibility and expediency in negotiating comprehensive bundled arrangements. 

Olivia Ross, Associate Director of ECEN shared her enthusiasm, saying, “We are pleased to have St. Vincent Charity join the Employers Centers of Excellence Network. We look for nationally recognized, high-quality providers who are eager to pioneer innovative health care delivery and payment models. The ECEN leverages provider collaboration to develop evidence-based, patient-centric programs to improve outcomes, increase satisfaction, and optimize employer value.”
 
Nationally, more than one-third of the adult population is considered obese (BMI of 30 or greater). With more than 40 obesity-associated diseases, including heart disease, diabetes and cancer, health care costs are upwards of $150 billion per year. Bariatric surgery is an option for those with severe or morbid obesity who have not had success with conventional weight loss methods.

FOR CLEVELAND’S EMTS, NO AMBULANCE DIVERSIONS WILL BE WELCOME.

When East Cleveland EMS head medic Anthony Savoy is on a run, he follows protocol and calls ahead to the closest hospital emergency department to make sure they have the space and staff to take the patient. If they don’t, the common practice has been for that hospital to go on diversion, meaning the squad must divert to another hospital that does have the capacity.

“If we get diverted and then we get a call while we’re at the hospital, our response time will be lengthened by maybe a minute, maybe two minutes,” Savoy says.

That may not sound like much, but Dr. James Feldman, an emergency medicine practitioner and researcher in Boston, says that minute or two – or what he calls time to treatment – really matters for some patients.

“I think we have strong evidence that people who have critical illness or injury who have a delayed time to treatment, do worse,” Feldman says.

One 2011 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that lengthy periods of diversion were associated with higher mortality rates among patients with time-sensitive conditions, such as heart attacks. 

Yet, emergency departments across the country, including those in Cleveland, continued the practice. It was not uncommon for some emergency departments to accumulate hundreds of hours of diversion time annually. Now, though, Cleveland’s hospital leaders have negotiated a verbal agreement to stop going on diversion by February 15 of this year.

But even as other area hospitals look into adding beds and staff to stop diversions now and in the future, St. Vincent Charity Medical Center chief nursing executive Bev Lozar says the downtown hospital hasn’t gone on diversion since 2012.
 
It’s just one more example of Care Beyond Medicine™ at St. Vincent Charity, where “It’s a matter of working together as a team,” Lozar says. “It starts every morning—we have a huddle of all the nursing directors and other clinical and support directors to review the day.”

On a recent Thursday morning, nearly 20 people, ranging from intensive care staff to the facilities leader, are present. Lozar pulls out a spreadsheet and points: “This is the kind of score sheet we start with.” The title at the top reads “Bed Report, Date 12/10/15, Census: 161.”

“It shows the various units, their capacity, and the census; who we expect to go home, who we expect to come in. It helps us start the plan.”

Ultimately, these kinds of operations meetings and communications drive staff to address efficiencies throughout the day and not use diversion as a crutch. To the benefit of all.

Referring to a study of Massachusetts’ 2009 regulations banning ambulance diversions, Dr. Feldman came to this conclusion: “Overwhelmingly, people have felt that this was a positive experience both for patients, the EMS system, and actually the emergency department staff as well.”

WORLD-CLASS ATHLETE FINDS WORLD-CLASS SURGEON RIGHT IN HIS OWN BACK YARD.

When, in the heat of competition, world-class CrossFit athlete Scott Panchik dropped into a sand dune and felt the pain, he knew something was wrong. 

“It was really painful. I finished the event, but it was one of the hardest weekends of my life. I made it back, but each day it got worse. When I got home, I found out I had a partially ruptured plantar fascia,” the CrossFit star said.

CrossFit is promoted as both an exercise philosophy and a competitive fitness sport, incorporating elements from high-intensity interval training, Olympic weightlifting, plyometrics (jump training), power lifting, gymnastics, girevoy (or kettle bell) sport, calisthenics, Strongman training, and other exercises.

So recently, when Panchik “tweaked” something while training, but didn’t take time off from the required strenuous training to heal properly, he ended up developing plantar fasciitis. And that day in the sand dune? That was the plantar fascia rupturing.

When the world-class athlete from Mentor, Ohio looked around at his treatment options, he realized it wasn’t necessary that he go to one coast or the other, but just down the road to Cleveland and the St. Vincent Charity Medical Center.

That’s where he found Dr. Michael Canales. Not only is Dr. Canales a practicing foot and ankle surgeon, he was also a gymnast at Ohio State University from 1996-1999, where he was a member of the 1996 NCAA championship team, as well as several Big 10 championship teams. 

Canales has since mentored and coached several Olympians and continues to provide mentorship to the OSU men’s gymnastics program today. So it logically follows that if anyone was going to understand not only the injury, but the mentality of the championship-level athlete, it was Dr. Canales.

But it was when Panchik saw an Instagram picture of Dr. Canales doing a split in the operating room on National Gymnastics Day, he knew he had found his doctor.

“That’s the guy you want working on you,” said Panchik. “He did a great job.”